Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

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Carrion Comfort
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Published: 2009-11-24
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THE PAST… Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face to face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazi’s themselves…

THE PRESENT… Compelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of 20th century history to reveal a secret society of beings who may often exist behind the world’s most horrible and violent events.

Killing from a distance, and by darkly manipulative proxy, they are people with the psychic ability to ‘use’ humans: read their minds, subjugate them to their wills, experience through their senses, feed off their emotions, force them to acts of unspeakable aggression.

Each year, three of the most powerful of this hidden order meet to discuss their ongoing campaign of induced bloodshed and deliberate destruction. But this reunion, something will go terribly wrong. Saul’s quest is about to reach its elusive object, drawing hunter and hunted alike into a struggle that will plumb the depths of mankind’s attraction to violence, and determine the future of the world itself…

 

“CARRION COMFORT is one of the three greatest horror novels of the 20th century. Simple as that.” –Stephen King “Epic in scale and scope but intimately disturbing, CARRION COMFORT spans the ages to rewrite history and tug at the very fabric of reality. A nightmarish chronicle of predator and prey that will shatter your world view forever. A true classic.” –Guillermo del Toro

“CARRION COMFORT is one of the scariest books ever written. Whenever I get the question asked Who’s your favorite author? my answer is always Dan Simmons.” –James Rollins

“One of the few major reinventions of the vampire concept, on a par with Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. –David Morrell

Stormblood by Jeremy Szal

Stormblood
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Published: 2021-01-21
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Vakov Fukasawa used to be a Reaper: a bio-enhanced soldier fighting for the Harmony, against a brutal invading empire. He’s still fighting now, on a different battlefield: taking on stormtech. To make him a perfect soldier, Harmony injected him with the DNA of an extinct alien race, altering his body chemistry and leaving him permanently addicted to adrenaline and aggression. But although they meant to create soldiers, at the same time Harmony created a new drug market that has millions hopelessly addicted to their own body chemistry.

Vakov may have walked away from Harmony, but they still know where to find him, and his former Reaper colleagues are being murdered by someone, or something – and Vakov is appalled to learn his estranged brother is involved. Suddenly it’s an investigation he can’t turn down . . . but the closer he comes to the truth, the more addicted to stormtech he becomes.
And it’s possible the war isn’t over, after all . . .

‘A high-power augmented SF adventure that will keep you reading!’ – Garth Nix
‘ This is what 21st century Sci-Fi ought to be’ – Miles Cameron, author of Artifact Space

Leviathan Wakes (the expanse serie)

Leviathan Wakes
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Published: 2011-06-15
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The book is the basis for the first season of The Expanse, a new original series premiering on Syfy in December 2015. Leviathan Wakes is James S. A. Corey's first novel in the epic series the Expanse, a modern masterwork of science fiction where humanity has colonized the solar system. Two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case…

Lord of a Shattered Land (Chronicles of Hanuvar Book 1)

Lord of the Shattered Land
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Published: 2023-08-01
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A vast empire's greatest foe. A conquered people's last hope. His name is Hanuvar, and he will set his people free! The Dervan Empire has at last triumphed over Volanus, putting the great city to the torch, its treasures looted, temples defiled, and fields sown with salt. What little remains of Volanus is scattered across the empire, its treasures plundered and its survivors sold into slavery. It is an absolute victory for the Dervans in…

The acclaimed new Sword and sorcery serie!

“A modern iteration of old school storytelling. Highly recommended to anyone in search of a fun run through strange lands and times.” —Glen Cook, author of The Black Company series

“Jones writes well, his strong prose giving a good sense of setting and able to stir emotions without ever getting itself noticed…. but the real strength of the book is simply that it is fun to read.”—Mark Lawrence, author of The broken empire and the Book of the Ancestor series

This wonderful work put me in mind of the stories I read when I was editing the Baen’s Robert E. Howard library.”—David Drake, bestselling author of the Hammer’s Slammers series, Redliners, Vettius and His Friends and the RCN series.

“Howard Andrew Jones is the leading Sword & Sorcery author of the 21st Century… His Lord of The Shattered Land is his best work yet, a heroic fantasy retelling of one of the great tales of antiquity, the fall of Carthage and its legendary general Hannibal…It’s a magnificent achievement, destined to become a modern classic.”—John O’Neill, World Fantasy Award Winning Publisher of Black Gate

“The book is a riveting portrait of a hero trying to keep his civilization alive in the wake of a devastating military defeat; it’s a series of ripping yarns that collectively add up to a greater story with a deeper impact than any of its parts; it’s another triumph for Howard Andrew Jones, premier wielder of the new edge in sword-and-sorcery.”—James Enge, World Fantasy Award nominated author of Blood of Ambrose

Howard Jones writes not-to-be-missed epic fantasy with immersive world building and the highest stakes for the characters, fighting for personal survival and the survival of their world.”—Martha Wells, Hugo, Nebula and Locus award-winning author of the Murderbot series “Howard Andrew Jones is a scholar and a gentleman, a deft multi-genre wordsmith… a living link between the right action-adventure narratives of old and the sprawling epic fantasies of today.”—Scott Lynch, author of The Lies of Locke Lamora

A vast empire’s greatest foe. A conquered people’s last hope. His name is Hanuvar, and he will set his people free! The Dervan Empire has at last triumphed over Volanus, putting the great city to the torch, its treasures looted, temples defiled, and fields sown with salt. What little remains of Volanus is scattered across the empire, its treasures plundered and its survivors sold into slavery. It is an absolute victory for the Dervans in every way but one. Hanuvar, last and greatest general of Volanus, still lives. He now travels the length of the Dervan Empire which conquered his homeland, driven by a singular purpose — to find what remains of his people that were carried into slavery across the empire, and free them from subjugation by any means necessary. Against the might of a vast empire, he had only an aging sword arm, a lifetime of hard won wisdom, and the greatest military mind in the world, set upon a single goal. No matter what the Empire musters against him, no matter what man or monster stands in his way, from the empire’s festering capital to its furthest outposts, Hanuvar would find his people, every last one of them. And he would set them free. Advance Praise for Lord of the Shattered Land: “

Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton

Fallen Dragon
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Published: 2009-12-14
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In the distant future, corporations have become sustainable communities with their own militaries, and corporate goals have essentially replaced political ideology. On a youthful, rebellious impulse, Lawrence joined the military of a corporation that he now recognizes to be ruthless and exploitative.

His only hope for escape is to earn enough money to buy his place in a better corporation. When his platoon is sent to a distant colony to quell a local resistance effort, it seems like a stroke of amazing fortune, and Lawrence plans to rob the colony of their fabled gemstone, the Fallen Dragon, to get the money he needs.

However, he soon discovers that the Fallen Dragon is not a gemstone at all, but an alien life form that the local colonists have been protecting since it crashed in their area. Now, Lawrence has to decide if he will steal the alien to exploit the use of its inherent biotechnical processes — which far exceed anything humans are capable of — or if he will help the Resistance get the alien home.

Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton

Great North Road
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Published: 2019-07-25
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In Newcastle, AD 2142, Detective Sidney Hurst attends a brutal murder scene. The victim is one of the wealthy North family's clones, but the most disturbing aspect is how he died. Twenty years ago, a North clone billionaire and his household were slaughtered in the exact same manner, on the tropical planet of St Libra. So was Angela Tramelo wrongly convicted back then? She'd never wavered under interrogation - claiming she alone survived an alien…

Salvation: A Novel (The Salvation Sequence)

Salvation
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Published: 2019-06-25
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Humanity’s complex relationship with technology spirals out of control in this first book of an all-new series from “the owner of the most powerful imagination in science fiction” (Ken Follett). “How far ‘space opera’ has come! The Old Masters of sci-fi would admire the scope and sweep of Salvation.”—The Wall Street Journal In the year 2204, humanity is expanding into the wider galaxy in leaps and bounds. Cutting-edge technology of linked jump gates has rendered…

The Abyss Beyond Dreams: Chronicle of the Fallers, Book 1

The Abyss Beyond Dreams
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Published: 2021-06-24
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Bestselling science fiction master Peter F. Hamilton delivers the first of a two-book saga set in his popular Commonwealth universe. Distinguished by deft plotting, a teeming cast of characters, dazzling scientific speculation, and imagination that brings the truly alien to life, The Abyss Beyond Dreams reveals Hamilton as a storyteller of astonishing ingenuity and power.

The year is 3326. Nigel Sheldon, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, receives a visit from the Raiel—self-appointed guardians of the Void, the enigmatic construct at the core of the galaxy that threatens the existence of all that lives. The Raiel convince Nigel to participate in a desperate scheme to infiltrate the Void.

Once inside, Nigel discovers that humans are not the only life-forms to have been sucked into the Void, where the laws of physics are subtly different and mental powers indistinguishable from magic are commonplace. The humans trapped there are afflicted by an alien species of biological mimics—the Fallers—that are intelligent but merciless killers.

Yet these same aliens may hold the key to destroying the threat of the Void forever—if Nigel can uncover their secrets. As the Fallers’ relentless attacks continue, and the fragile human society splinters into civil war, Nigel must uncover the secrets of the Fallers—before he is killed by the very people he has come to save.

The Dreaming Void (void trilogy)

The Dreaming Void
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Published: 2009-02-24
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The year is 3589, fifteen hundred years after Commonwealth forces barely staved off human extinction in a war against the alien Prime. Now an even greater danger has surfaced: a threat to the existence of the universe itself. At the very heart of the galaxy is the Void, a self-contained microuniverse that cannot be breached, cannot be destroyed, and cannot be stopped as it steadily expands in all directions, consuming everything in its path: planets, stars, civilizations.

The Void has existed for untold millions of years. Even the oldest and most technologically advanced of the galaxy’s sentient races, the Raiel, do not know its origin, its makers, or its purpose. But then Inigo, an astrophysicist studying the Void, begins dreaming of human beings who live within it. Inigo’s dreams reveal a world in which thoughts become actions and dreams become reality. Inside the Void, Inigo sees paradise.

Thanks to the gaiafield, a neural entanglement wired into most humans, Inigo’s dreams are shared by hundreds of millions–and a religion, the Living Dream, is born, with Inigo as its prophet. But then he vanishes. Suddenly there is a new wave of dreams. Dreams broadcast by an unknown Second Dreamer serve as the inspiration for a massive Pilgrimage into the Void. But there is a chance that by attempting to enter the Void, the pilgrims will trigger a catastrophic expansion, an accelerated devourment phase that will swallow up thousands of worlds. And thus begins a desperate race to find Inigo and the mysterious Second Dreamer. Some seek to prevent the Pilgrimage; others to speed its progress–while within the Void, a supreme entity has turned its gaze, for the first time, outward. . . .

Reviewers exhaust superlatives when it comes to the science fiction of Peter F. Hamilton. His complex and engaging novels, which span thousands of years–and light-years–are as intellectually stimulating as they are emotionally fulfilling. Now, with The Dreaming Void, the first volume in a trilogy set in the same far-future as his acclaimed Commonwealth saga, Hamilton has created another ambitious and gripping space epic.

Set in the same universe as the Commonwealth Saga, the Void Trilogy is set 1200 years after

Pandora’s Star (Commonwealth Saga)

Pandora's Star
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Published: 2020-08-20
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Pandora’s Star is the first part of Hamilton’s epic Commonwealth Saga duology – a fantastic galaxy-spanning novel from the master of space opera. At the edge of the galaxy something awakens – and it’s coming for us Earth AD 2329: Humanity has colonized over four hundred planets, all interlinked by wormholes. For the first time in mankind’s history there is peace. Then a star over a thousand light years away suddenly vanishes, imprisoned inside a force field of immense size. Yet who – or what – has that sort of technology?

And what could this mean for us? Only a faster-than-light starship, captained by ex-NASA astronaut Wilson Kime, can reach that distance to investigate. However, what if there was a very good reason to seal off an entire star system? Also, getting in could prove easier than the worst possible outcome – stopping something else from getting out

. The Commonwealth Saga duology concludes with Judas Unchained. ‘The best book Hamilton has written in years’ – Guardian ‘Anyone who begins this won’t be able to put it down’ – Publishers Weekly

there is a follow up trilogy set 1200 years after available here